The collections come from the legacy of the writer Italo Svevo (1861-1928), Letizia Svevo Fonda Savio, who donated the patrimony of documents to the City of Trieste - consisting of thousands of letters, manuscripts of works, notes, personal documents and photographs - and a few objects that survived the bombing that destroyed the Svevo villa in 1945: his cupboard-bookcase, a gold pen, the beloved violin, and some books.
The archive and library of the Svevian Museum are the most important collection of Svevian literature in the world and include ironic and jokey private documents concerning the life of the writer, and, at the same time, the cultural history of Trieste.
The three unmissable pieces are:
1) the golden pen given by Svevo to his daughter Letizia;
2) Svevo's famed violin, a close relative of that which we read about in "La coscienza di Zeno" ("Zeno's Conscience") which belonged to his younger brother Elio who had left it to Ettore as he was dying. Svevo played it for almost all his life.
3) the cupboard bookcase with the initials screen printed on the doors, ES for Ettore Schmitz, the true name of the writer.
